Help a Conky newbie get going?

[anthony62490]

I recently obtained a Conky script that should monitor the current song from a radio stream called Nectarine. So I installed Conky, created my .conkyrc file followed the following steps:

Insert this line at end of .conf file:
${execpi 30 ~/nectarine.pl}

and create file nectarine.pl with execute atribute
#!/usr/bin/perl

# use module
use XML::Simple;
use Data::Dumper;

# create object
$tempfile = "$ENV{HOME}/.conky/nectarine_queue.tmp";
`wget -O $tempfile "http://www.scenemusic.net/demovibes/xml/queue/"`;
$xml = new XML::Simple;
my $xs1 = XML::Simple->new();

# read XML file
my $doc = $xs1->XMLin($tempfile);

print 'Nectarine $hr '."\n";
print '${color 000000}Song: ${color}' . $doc->{now}->{entry}->{song}->{content} ."\n";
print '${color 000000}Artist: ${color}' . $doc->{now}->{entry}->{artist}->{content} . " ( " . $doc->{now}->{entry}->{song}->{length} . " )\n";
print '${color 000000}Requester: ${color}' . $doc->{now}->{entry}->{requester}->{content} . "\n".'${color 000000}RequestTime: ${color}' . $doc->{now}->{entry}->{request_time} . "\n";
print "------------------------------------------------------\n";

foreach my $key (keys (%{$doc->{queue}})){
$len = 10;
for ($i=0; $i < $len ; $i++){
print '${color 000000} '.$i.' ${color} ${color FFCCAA}' . $doc->{queue}->{$key}->[$i]->{song}->{content} .'${color} - ';
print $doc->{queue}->{$key}->[$i]->{artist}->{content} ." ( " .$doc->{queue}->{$key}->[$i]->{song}->{length}. " ) \n";
}
}

So now I have two files ".conkyrc and nectarine.pl".
.conkyrc is only one line long
nectarine.pl has all of the scripting info and it has been marked as an executable file.

Terminal Output:

anthony@anthony-desktop:~$ conky
Conky: /home/anthony/.conkyrc: 1: no such configuration: '${execpi'
Conky: missing text block in configuration; exiting
***** Imlib2 Developer Warning ***** :
	This program is calling the Imlib call:

	imlib_context_free();

	With the parameter:

	context

	being NULL. Please fix your program.

Any idea what's going on here?

[anthony62490]

bump

[Ginsu543]

Have you tried removing the ${ and } from the line in your .conkyrc file? ${} is usually used for displaying text in Conky, not to run a program or call another script.

[anthony62490]

Have you tried removing the ${ and } from the line in your .conkyrc file? ${} is usually used for displaying text in Conky, not to run a program or call another script.

Hmm. This would make sense. I have modified .conkyrc and the contents look like this:

execpi 30 ~/nectarine.pl

Terminal Output:

anthony@anthony-desktop:~$ conky 
Conky: /home/anthony/.conkyrc: 1: no such configuration: 'execpi'
Conky: missing text block in configuration; exiting
***** Imlib2 Developer Warning ***** :
	This program is calling the Imlib call:

	imlib_context_free();

	With the parameter:

	context

	being NULL. Please fix your program.

I gather that "execpi" stands for Execute Command Prompt + Interval. It looks like I may be missing a package, but I can't find any package called Execpi.

[Ginsu543]

Sorry I can't be more specific in my help... I'm just not very familiar with this particular script. But as I was reading your output, a thought occurred to me. Which version of Conky did you install? Did you install the one in the default Ubuntu repos? If you look for Conky in Synaptic Package Manager, you should be able to see conky, conky-all, conky-cli, and conky-std. If you installed conky, I suggest you try installing the conky-all package instead. It's Conky with all features enabled. Perhaps then your Conky will recognize the execpi command.

[anthony62490]

Heh. Sorry. I've got the conky-all package. Well, thanks for your help. I managed to get a different to show some signs of functionality. I'll keep tweaking until someone can help me out with this particular script. Thank you for your time.

[Ginsu543]

Try adding "TEXT" at the beginning of your .conkyrc, like this:

TEXT
${execpi 30 ~/nectarine.pl}

[anthony62490]

Okay, that seemed to inject at least some semblance of life into it. I put in the TEXT block and the terminal came up with this:

anthony@anthony-desktop:~$ conky
Conky: desktop window (1c000ab) is subwindow of root window (c3)
Conky: drawing to desktop window
Conky: drawing to single buffer
Can't locate XML/Simple.pm in @INC (@INC contains: /etc/perl /usr/local/lib/perl/5.10.0 /usr/local/share/perl/5.10.0 /usr/lib/perl5 /usr/share/perl5 /usr/lib/perl/5.10 /usr/share/perl/5.10 /usr/local/lib/site_perl .) at /home/anthony/nectarine.pl line 4.
BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at /home/anthony/nectarine.pl line 4.

It may be helpful to note that other than this one script, I have no other Conky settings. So, I could probably run this using only the nectarine script (but maybe not. I'm not too familiar with Perl).

[DemonBob]

Okay, that seemed to inject at least some semblance of life into it. I put in the TEXT block and the terminal came up with this:

anthony@anthony-desktop:~$ conky
Conky: desktop window (1c000ab) is subwindow of root window (c3)
Conky: drawing to desktop window
Conky: drawing to single buffer
Can't locate XML/Simple.pm in @INC (@INC contains: /etc/perl /usr/local/lib/perl/5.10.0 /usr/local/share/perl/5.10.0 /usr/lib/perl5 /usr/share/perl5 /usr/lib/perl/5.10 /usr/share/perl/5.10 /usr/local/lib/site_perl .) at /home/anthony/nectarine.pl line 4.
BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at /home/anthony/nectarine.pl line 4.

It may be helpful to note that other than this one script, I have no other Conky settings. So, I could probably run this using only the nectarine script (but maybe not. I'm not too familiar with Perl).

sudo apt-get install libxml-simple-perl

[anthony62490]

sudo apt-get install libxml-simple-perl

Okay, I have installed and reset X Windows. I now got this from my dear terminal:

anthony@anthony-desktop:~$ conky
Conky: desktop window (1c000ab) is subwindow of root window (c3)
Conky: drawing to desktop window
Conky: drawing to single buffer
/home/anthony/.conky/nectarine_queue.tmp: No such file or directory
File does not exist: /home/anthony/.conky/nectarine_queue.tmp at /home/anthony/nectarine.pl line 14

So I created .conky and tried on more time. Now I've got this:

anthony@anthony-desktop:~$ conky
Conky: desktop window (1c000ab) is subwindow of root window (c3)
Conky: drawing to desktop window
Conky: drawing to single buffer
--2010-08-30 01:17:36--  http://www.scenemusic.net/demovibes/xml/queue/
Resolving www.scenemusic.net... 188.40.20.83
Connecting to www.scenemusic.net|188.40.20.83|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: unspecified [application/xml]
Saving to: `/home/anthony/.conky/nectarine_queue.tmp'

    [ <=>                                   ] 6,742       39.3K/s   in 0.2s    

2010-08-30 01:17:36 (39.3 KB/s) - `/home/anthony/.conky/nectarine_queue.tmp' saved [6742]

Conky: unknown variable co
Conky: unknown variable co
Conky: unknown variable co
--2010-08-30 01:18:06--  http://www.scenemusic.net/demovibes/xml/queue/
Resolving www.scenemusic.net... 188.40.20.83
Connecting to www.scenemusic.net|188.40.20.83|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: unspecified [application/xml]
Saving to: `/home/anthony/.conky/nectarine_queue.tmp'

    [ <=>                                   ] 6,741       42.3K/s   in 0.2s    

2010-08-30 01:18:06 (42.3 KB/s) - `/home/anthony/.conky/nectarine_queue.tmp' saved [6741]

Conky: unknown variable co
Conky: unknown variable co
Conky: unknown variable co
Conky: unknown variable co
Conky: unknown variable co
Conky: unknown variable co
Conky: unknown variable co
Conky: unknown variable co

It appears to be working decently, but there are some issues(flickering, position, general feel) If you have any help with these problems, feel free to help ; Otherwise, consider this question solved. Thanks to all.